


Growing Pains

by ShitpostingfromtheBarricade



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Don't copy to another site, Enjolras POV, Established Relationship, Gen, M/M, tree anarchy, when in doubt Talk Trees
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-09
Updated: 2020-11-09
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:08:35
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27213937
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ShitpostingfromtheBarricade/pseuds/ShitpostingfromtheBarricade
Summary: “Trees are anarchists,” Prouvaire interrupts.Pursing his lips, Enjolras watches his friend as he carefully selects his next words.  “How so?”Enjolras has something on his mind, and Prouvaire offers advice (in typical Prouvaire fashion).Warnings:none
Relationships: Enjolras & Jean Prouvaire, Enjolras/Grantaire (Les Misérables)
Comments: 12
Kudos: 79
Collections: Enjoltaire Games 2020





	Growing Pains

**Author's Note:**

> _You can have more than one home. You can carry your roots with you and decide where they grow._   
>  _-Henning Mankell_
> 
> Thanks as always to the incomparable [PieceOfCait](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PieceOfCait/pseuds/PieceOfCait) for beta-reading. <3

When the time finally arrives for his coffee date with Prouvaire, Enjolras isn’t all that interested in going. Jean Prouvaire is gentle and kind and dreamy, and though capable of almost unfathomable ferocity in the face of injustice, eirs is not the firm hand that he needs right now. He and Prouvaire have already had to reschedule twice, though, and Enjolras refuses to put em off a third time. 

“Enjolras!” ey cheer as he draws closer. Two steaming mugs already sit on the table.

Enjolras allows Prouvaire to pull him into a tight hug, taking care not to mangle eir hair’s shape before pulling away. “I hope I didn’t leave you waiting long.”

“I was already here,” ey tell him, returning to eir seat and gesturing toward the drinks. “I thought we could try something new? They’re both vegan.”

Assuming his place across from Prouvaire, Enjolras picks up the mug closest to him. A dubious puff of whipped cream obscures the mixture that lies beneath, but under it all he smells strong coffee with hints of vanilla. He takes a tentative sip, swishing it around his mouth before swallowing.

“Well? What do you think?”

It’s awful. “It’s fine. I’m not sure I’d order it again.”

Prouvaire smiles like ey know exactly what Enjolras meant to say. “Thank you for trying it anyway.”

“Of course,” and he means it: he would go through fire, through pouring rain and bullets and worse for his friends. That is the crux of his problem, after all.

“Something’s on your mind.”

“It’s nothing.”

Prouvaire narrows eir eyes at him over eir coffee before giving a “hmph” and sipping from eir mug. No effort is made to obscure eir grimace as ey let the coffee fall back into eir mug. “Another swing and a miss for Jean Prouvaire,” ey admit as ey smack eir mouth sourly. 

Enjolras feels a reluctant and sorry smile fall over his face. “Bad day?”

“Not necessarily. Could only be a handful of bad things that I bemoan all day — _that_ would be a bad day. I still have an excellent opportunity to have a very good day.”

Enjolras’s eyebrows raise as he turns the information over, almost making a second pass at his drink before remembering himself.

“And you?” Prouvaire prompts. “You seem … distracted.”

“Courfeyrac says I always look distracted.”

“Courfeyrac is a font of wisdom,” ey agree, “but today something is troubling you.”

Damn Prouvaire and eir emotional intelligence. “It’s fine,” he says with a practiced shrug. “It’s nothing.”

Prouvaire does not look like ey believe that for a second, but ey don’t push the subject. “Have you gotten around to reading that anthology I lent you yet?”

“I’ve started it, but I’m not finished yet.” When he’d received the tome, Enjolras had promised himself that he’d read two pages each morning and two each night; it’s been going well, though he doesn’t understand most of them. “The language is beautiful.”

“Have any jumped out at you?”

The ones he’s understood have cut him to the very core, eviscerating him and leaving him awfully raw for 11 at night or half past 6 in the morning, but — “There’s one — forgive me, the title escapes me.” Enjolras makes a face. How does he describe a poem that he doesn’t understand except in the weight of the words, the feeling of them on his tongue as he mouths along to them in the secret hours of the night? “The one with the wind and the waves. The rush and the weight —”

“— and the light and the sound,” smiles Prouvaire. “I know exactly the one.”

“It’s …” He shakes his head. “It’s indescribable.”

No response comes, and Enjolras glances back up to see Prouvaire giving him another curious look before standing and reaching across the table to steal Enjolras’s coffee. “Did you know,” ey say as ey sit back down, “that the location of the world’s largest tree is a secret?”

The factoid summons a vague recollection of Combeferre having once said something to the effect, and Enjolras nods. “To prevent opportunists from cutting it down.”

“Mm, yes, but also because we can’t actually be certain which is the largest.” Prouvaire takes an adventurous sip from the stolen mug; evidently it’s more pleasing than eir own had been. “Though we have some suspicions.”

“I’m aware that there are different standards for ‘large,’ but surely a universal form of measurement —”

“Trees are anarchists,” ey interrupt.

Pursing his lips, Enjolras watches his friend as he carefully selects his next words. “How so?”

“There’s this artist, Van Aken, who took a fruit tree and decided that he was going to graft as many other strains to it as he could, to test the limits.” 

Enjolras has no idea what this has to do with anarchy or the world’s largest tree or poetry at all, but Prouvaire has always tended toward a freer explanatory structure than his other friends, so he humors em. “What were his findings? What was the limit?”

“There were none,” Prouvaire grins, a gleam in eir eye. “The tree’s fruiting period runs from July through October, and it produces over forty different varieties. There’s a guerilla group in San Francisco who practices the same principle to graft fruiting species onto the city’s ornamental varieties to provide free food to its residents.”

Enjolras’s eyebrows raise as he mentally jots the idea down to revisit the next time the Amis are between events. “I see. Is that why they’re not sure, then? Because the biggest tree is made from so many others?”

A sly expression crosses Prouvaire’s face. “It is, in fact, entirely opposite! The world’s largest tree is very difficult to identify because tree roots can reach above the soil to become new saplings!”

“New saplings?” he repeats, frowning.

“Yes! There are entire forests that scientists suspect may be comprised of only a handful of trees, if that.”

The information seeps over him, slowly incorporating itself into his thoughts. “Is that so?” 

“It is,” promises Prouvaire. “Its roots are spread far and wide, so even if the original were to be cut down, the root system — the rest of the forest — would remain. Who knows? The original tree might even be able to grow back, under the right conditions. Trees are ferocious things, after all.”

“They are,” Enjolras agrees, nodding absentmindedly. His attention isn’t on Prouvaire anymore so much as the space above eir head, over the dent Enjolras had managed to put in eir hair despite his best efforts.

“I hate to cut this meeting short,” Prouvaire says, standing abruptly, “but I need to write lovesick poetry about the beautiful creature I saw on my way to class this morning.”

It snaps Enjolras from his trance. “Did you get their name?”

Ey sigh wistfully. _“Rhinoderma darwinii.”_

He nods. “I wish you the best of luck, then.”

“Grantaire!” Enjolras calls when he returns home. He knows his partner is already in because Grantaire has left his sneakers in a messy pile in front of their shoe rack like he always does. Today, Enjolras can’t bring himself to be annoyed about it. “Grantaire!”

“Bedroom!” comes the muffled response.

The distance is easily closed, and before Enjolras is even at the open door he can see his partner draped over their armchair with a book.

“Our flat is all of three and a half rooms, I don’t understand how —” 

Enjolras already has a very good idea what Grantaire doesn’t understand, so the decision to cut him off with a kiss isn’t one that takes much consideration. The kiss is deep and sweet, and Grantaire has nearly pushed himself fully upright following it when Enjolras finally breaks away. “I’ve put in the paperwork. I’m coming with you.”

It takes a moment for Grantaire’s expression to shift from something bordering on bliss (Enjolras is more than a little smug that, even after two years, a single kiss can still derail his partner’s entire train of thought) through several other increasingly unreadable ones before landing on emphatic disapproval. “No,” he says decisively. “No, we already discussed this: your work is here, your friends and family are here. Your _countrymen_ are here, Enjolras, you can’t —”

“The paper has been wanting a correspondent on the ground, it’s perfect. And my parents already see me on facetime more often than not.”

“That’s not a compelling argument to leave them for a different _continent.”_

“We can come back for holidays, it’ll be fine.”

“And our friends?” Grantaire’s arms cross expectantly. “Don’t tell me you’re going to arrange ten different weekly calls with them; the time difference alone will make it nigh impossible. 

“And —” Here Grantaire sputters. “And you love France!” Enjolras doesn’t need to turn to know that his partner is looking over past him at the giant collage Courfeyrac had given Enjolras a few weeks ago for his birthday, full of every significant place in France to him and tens of pictures of protests and meetings and late nights and early mornings and everything in between. “And France loves you. It’d be like a heart transplant," Grantaire says with a helpless shrug. "Could either of you even survive?”

The simile is perfect, and Enjolras clings to it. “It’s more like … like a cutting. Like a tree. They won’t disappear without me, they’ll continue growing. After all, what good is all of our work on creating sustainable change if it can’t continue without me?” Shaking his head, he surrenders a huff. “Yes, it’ll be harder, and yes, you may catch me in calls at odd hours with Combeferre and Courfeyrac —”

“Gods,” Grantaire mutters, shaking his head, “they’ll be wanting to hear from you _daily.”_

“— but we can still live and thrive. Grantaire,” Enjolras says, kneeling at his partner’s feet, “as long as I’m with you, I can put down roots anywhere.”

For perhaps the first time in all of the time he’s known Grantaire, his partner seems at a total loss for words. Grantaire blinks once, twice, three times before surging forward to pull Enjolras into another kiss, cradling Enjolras’s head after with a delicacy usually reserved for small rodents and that statue Bossuet had given Grantaire years ago to celebrate some success neither of them will own being able to recall.

“Are you sure?” asks Grantaire at last, voice barely above a whisper.

“With you?” A smile breaks across Enjolras’s face. “Always.”

**Author's Note:**

> Hello friends, thank you for reading my ER Games submission! The theme was "home," and I was out on Team Enjolras!
> 
> Now that we've been revealed, I am at liberty to share all of the details I had to keep hidden before:  
> \- Jehan absolutely knew what ey were doing here: ey pretty much used the book ey loaned Enjolras as eir own personal tarot deck to read how he was feeling and surmise what in his personal life was causing this.  
> \- The book and poem were not based off of any real poem, only the concept of extreme clashing emotional conflict.  
> \- All tree facts are accurate, and I highly recommend doing your own independent research, they're really cool.  
> \- _Rhinoderma darwinii_ is a type of frog.  
> \- Bossuet and Grantaire both recall that night; Joly knows about it because neither of them can keep a secret from Joly, but they're not happy about knowing.
> 
> If you want to reach out or talk trees, please feel free to comment below or shoot me a message at my [tumblr](http://shitpostingfromthebarricade.tumblr.com), I sincerely love hearing from y'all!!


End file.
